Showhouse

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SHOWHOUSE - PAGE 3

Bargain hunters will find everything from lace collars to Mexican crafts at the 14th annual World's Largest Garage Sale sponsored by the Evanston Chamber of Commerce from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. More than 100,000 people attended last year's sale. The event is being held in the Evanston Municipal Garage on Sherman Avenue between Church and Davis Streets. Sellers of antiques, collectibles, crafts, new close-out merchandise and cast-off items fill 475 stalls in the garage. `India: A Festival of Science," a panoramic exhibit of Indian culture, continues through Sept.

Fourteen interior design firms and six landscape firms have managed to transform a few acres of Milwaukee's Lake Michigan shoreline and a chateau-style house into a tiny bit of France for most of June. The occasion is the 1996 Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League Showhouse, "Le Petit Chateau et sons Jardins Splendides" (or "The Small House and its Splendid Gardens"), which opens Saturday and runs through June 23. This little jewel of a house is a superb setting for the showhouse; its architectural merit alone is worth the trip.

Ann Hooe is stenciling her way into showhouse history. The Winnetka resident has created one-of-a-kind wall designs for more than 20 Chicago area showhouses, since starting her custom stenciling business in 1978. For this year's Park Ridge Youth Campus Showhouse, running through Sunday in Northbrook, she designed a brightly colored morning glory border for the downstairs powder room. In the past, admirers of Hooe's work had to hire her if they wanted her showhouse designs recreated in their own homes.

Aficionados of showcase houses get a chance at another helping at the American Society of Interior Designers showhouse in Lake Geneva, Wis., through Sept. 6. Known as Loramoor, the house is the largest of 30 buildings designed by architect Jarvis Hunt on the James Hobart Moore estate. Newly remodeled, Loramoor is home to syndicated cartoonist Joe Martin (creator of "Mister Boffo") and currently showcases the works of 24 members of the local chapter of the ASID. Its 22 rooms have been decorated in contemporary and equestrian themes.

`Whoever bought this house is somebody's Santa," said interior designer Marcie Holzer of the Park Ridge Youth Campus Holiday Designers' Showhouse, which is being held this year in a knock-your-socks-off luxury home, the Orren Pickell Builders' Concept House in Riverwoods. The showhouse will be open to the public Thursday through Nov. 12 and Nov. 16 though 19. Visitors can carry away many a festive idea from the 5,250-square-foot, award-winning home, which has been dressed in holiday style byprofessional designers.

Today is your last chance to catch the House Beautiful showhouse in Glencoe. House Beautiful magazine sponsored a recent makeover of a six-bedroom, nine-bathroom home, where it took six months to add 6,300 square feet to the original 4,500 square feet, according to the magazine. The Mediterranean-style house was built in 1917, said on-site project manager Robert De Carlo of Robert De Carlo Associates. Architect Bill Harrison; designers Gregga Jordan Smeisny Inc.; Alexa Hampton; Jamie Drake; and Hester Decorating worked on the project.

Every room tells a story at the 1993 Lake Forest Infant Welfare Showcase House, which opens Saturday. The former estate of the late philanthropist William A.P. Pullman, the 23-room Colonial home is a tribute to the talents and the imaginations of 19 Chicago-area interior designers. Virginia Coulter of Lake Forest, one of the designers whose work is featured, said: "A good designer always works with a client's tastes in mind. I designed my showhouse room for a man I wish I knew, a world traveler with elegant taste."

Early-bird special: It was a cheap peek, just 99 cents for a recent Saturday tour of a bare-bones Hinsdale villa. In its heyday, it had been a home away from home for Hollywood's finest, friends of the late owners, Jane and George Bunker. Like an aging actress, the 35-room palace is in need of a facelift; the bargain admission offered oglers an opportunity to see the Philip West-designed edifice before interior designers transform it into the 1996 Decorators' Showcase House, a charity benefit sponsored by the women of Hinsdale's Grace Episcopal Church.

It is all too rare that one can purchase a well-designed and desirable item while helping out a worthy cause. Residents of and visitors to New York City during October will have a chance to do that at the ShowHouse sponsored by Metropolitan Home magazine to benefit the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS (DIFFA). Underwritten by a number of design-related companies, such as G.E. Appliances and Lenox China and Crystal, the ShowHouse was organized by Metropolitan Home as a way to respond to a major health crisis that has hit the design field especially hard.

English architecture meets American Midcentury Modern in the 2002 Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League Showhouse, with 25 spaces decorated by top interior designers from the Milwaukee area. League organizers always pick an architectural jewel; no exception this year. Designed in 1905 by Alexander Esch-weiler, the Frank Ward Smith house, 2405 E. Wyoming Pl., looks out on Milwaukee's North Point Water Tower, a landmark in its own right. A house of many gables, the mansion displays the touches characteristic of Eschweiler's work--dormers with diamond-paned windows, five arches on the facade and strong simple lines overall.